Safety E-Quick Tip
OWYN Safety Mgmt Platform
Here’s How the Story Goes (Part 2)
To recap last week’s Safety E-QuickTip, your company was visited by OSHA, it was a day or 2 before you heard about the visit, everyone including your foreman felt you had nothing to worry about. It was a while before you received citations that you were told you didn’t need to worry about. OSHA had pictures of employees violating OSHA standards and you ended up having to pay for those citations.
Citations that you were told you didn’t have to be concerned about getting because no one was violating any OSHA regulations when the compliance officer came to the site.
Does that sound about right?
Well, here’s the rest of the story.
You decide this is the last visit from OSHA that will end with your company receiving citations and having to pay penalties.
So, you implement a safety program, train employees, provide toolbox talks or safety meetings on a regular basis and even hire a safety consultant to perform random inspections to help ensure your foremen and employees are working safely and in accordance with OSHA regulations.
Months or maybe even a year or 2 go by and you hear OSHA is at one of your worksites.
Feeling confident you head to the site and after talking with the compliance officer you believe everything is going to work out just fine.
The compliance officer tells you that things look pretty good, and he can see that you’re really trying to keep your people safe and work in compliance with the regulations. He goes on to say that he sees a few things that need corrected, and you have your employees make those corrections.
The compliance officer then says he’ll take the information back to his boss, including everything the company is doing to comply and they will decide what, if any violations, will be issued.
Feeling pretty good about the inspection, OSHA leaves the site with you anticipating you will never see any citations.
Months pass and you’ve forgotten about the visit when the citation arrives in the mail.
You open them to find 4 violations: 1 Other than Serious, 1 Serious and 2 Repeat and penalties in the amount of . . . Well, we won’t talk about that.
And you thought you and your employees were doing a good job of trying to comply with OSHA regulations.
What would have happened if you had done nothing?
So, you start all over with more training, toolbox talks, and safety consultants doing a few more inspections.
And you get cited by OSHA after each inspection again and again and again.
That’s the rest of the story.
A story that repeats itself, leaving you believing you can’t win.
But you can, and it’s not all that difficult. We’ll talk more about that next week.
Employee QuickTip
As an employee, you cannot be held accountable for violating OSHA regulations, but the company you work for can and will be held accountable with citations and penalties that can have a negative financial impact on the company. So, when you think you’ve done it this way time and time again and nothing has happened, OSHA could be lurking around the corner and your company will pay the price.
Employer/Management QuickTip
If this story sounds familiar, don’t give up. There is a way to prevent OSHA citations even if one of your employees is caught in a picture violating an OSHA regulation and we’ll discuss that next week.
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